


Marked: Epilogue

by goodgirlwhoshopeful



Series: Marked [7]
Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2015), And Then There Were None - Christie, CHRISTIE Agatha - Works
Genre: <3, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Romance, Sexual Tension, Tension, V proud of my canon divergent ending, finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:15:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7213045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodgirlwhoshopeful/pseuds/goodgirlwhoshopeful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Detective Inspector Trebor first heard of a mammoth fire on the privately owned Soldier Island, he had assumed it was either a false alarm or the work of some prankster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marked: Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> This is it, guys. I'm kind of emotional posting this... I need thought when I started that wed get here, over 50k in words.... 
> 
> Thank you the wonderful @evennstars for her beta/passionate listening....... and to @bruhcewaynes for all she also did in wonderful, enthusiastic beta-ing. I live for feedback from you guys. I do hope I haven't annoyed you to the point of you never working with me again, because I'd love to. 
> 
> Let me know what you think of my ending.  
> I'm very proud of it because it seemed a logical conclusion to me if I were Philip... 
> 
> Big hugs to you all!

 

Epilogue

* * *

 

When Detective Inspector Trebor first heard of a mammoth fire on the privately owned Soldier Island, he had assumed it was either a false alarm or the work of some prankster. After one phone call, he had been entirely intent on ignoring the request for his department to investigate, having got plenty of more pressing polling duties to attend to. However, after the fourth call from a concerned member of the public, he had realised that perhaps he should take a few men out to the island to investigate. The Constables seemed unable to track down the new owner of the island, a Mr. U. N. Owen, thus leading them to worry that perhaps the fire was something more sinister, that perhaps the man and his wife perished in a house fire so far from help. 

When they arrived, the skies were dark and heavy with dusk humidity. It was clear that something serious had accorded on the island. They hadn’t expected for the entire house to be up in flames, or for there to be two figures stood on the headland, a man and a woman. Their uniforms were slightly charred, their faces covered in soot, and the woman appeared to be in a deep state of shock. She shook violently in the arms of the male, her eyes wide with a look of frenzied distress. The man was crouched, holding her against his body as though to both protect and restrain her. As Trebor and his constables approached the pair, their torches illuminated the two faces a stark white colour, the woman collapsed to the sand with relief, sobbing from deep within her chest. As they were helped to the safety of the coastguard boat, the man managed to stutter out that they were married, they’d been staff for Mr. Owen and in charge of domestic duties within his new home. The man invited a household full of guests, for whom they were caring, when a fire broke out, in which all six guests had perished.

“My name’s Thomas Rogers,” the dark-haired male urged as he helped the woman into the boat first, hooting still from the smoke. “This is Ethel – my wife.” His London accent was strong and distinctive, as was his slight stutter. He seemed a nervous man, always looking down or at his wife, his attention almost primarily on her safety, despite the fact his arm seemed to be bleed profusely. As Constable Jones attempted to relieve Mr. Rogers of his wife’s weight, the man hurriedly urged them to leave her, curling her under his chin in an embrace as reverent as that of a child. “I almost didn’t get her out – she almost didn’t _…_ I don’t know wha’ I would’a done – “ 

“Leave the poor man! Questions later!” Trebor urged, feeling sympathy fill his heart at the sight of a grown man so close to tears. He pictured himself and his sweet Alice in their place and was unable to feel little else. 

Upon arrival at the shore, it was near dark – the large plumes of smoke coming from India House barely visible now. Trevor urged his staff to be hurried in their questioning of Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, feeling nothing but pity for their ordeal. Once checked over by a doctor, it was confined that Mrs. Rogers had suffered considerable smoke inhalation and so was treated with supplies of oxygen. Mr. Rogers, ever meek, never left her side and apologised continuously, seemingly racked with guilt, before finally letting them treat his arm. 

It was only afterwards that they seemed calm enough to begin releasing the awful events that had occurred, of a madman, with a gun, whom had been invited as a guest, who had brought cocaine and violence into the house. He had started the fire before intending to run away, shooting Mr. Rogers in the arm when he had tried to stop him. 

“Then he went for Ethel!” the man had whispered, his hands shaking with the memory. “So I hit him from behind.” The man’s voice quivered as he held off more tears. “I can’t stop _seeing_ it – but I just couldn’t let him hurt her! Not my wife!”

“They were all asleep!” the woman despaired when she was questioned, her dark hair pinned tight to her head, though tendrils had escaped and were stuck to her blackened face. “By the time I realised there was a fire I could not get to them all – they’d all drank heavily the previous night and were heavily asleep! He was setting fire to everything like a mad man, then he came for _me_ when I tried to stop him. I thank merciful God Mr. Rogers was there.”

As investigations began on the island, it was found that all the human remains were indeed of the number of guests the man described – six in total, all in their beds, except for one, the madman, who was found on what had been the upstairs landing. All were charred beyond recognition and were useless for any form of identification, as there was nothing left but the bare skeletons. The remains of some of the guest’s papers were found, identifying one of them as a Miss Emily Brent. Some of her journalistic writings survived the blaze, having been kept in a metal box, and detailed how one of the guests, though she did not state their name, was a ‘despicable’ man, one who was clearly mad and confessed to killing many in the past. She wrote of being afraid to sleep, as Mr. Owen had not yet arrived as he was supposed to that evening, especially knowing that such a man was asleep down the corridor. The survivors, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, identified the ‘madman’ as one Anthony Marston, and it took all of an hour for Trebor to trace that name back to records that told of a troublesome young man, prone to excess drinking, narcotics and, in one previous circumstance, the murder of children with his automobile. After the preliminary questioning, it was clear that there was little else that Mr. and Mrs. Rogers could contribute, and then they were allowed to return home to London, where they had been previously based. 

“Thank you, Detective! Thank you!” the pretty Mrs. Rogers had urged as they left, now in fresh clothing supplied by the state. Her eyes shined with a continuous look of near-hysterics, which told Trebor that she was perhaps as much a victim of the heinous crime as those who were burned alive. He doubted the images of what she saw would ever leave her.

“Take a holiday – I would, if I were you,” he’d urged as he watched them go, shaking Mr. Roger’s hand. He nodded meekly as he had his arm around his wife, who cowered slightly against the wind. 

“I think perhaps we must – if you do not need us at all, that is. Thank you, Detective Inspector, for being so understanding.” 

As Rogers guided his wife away, the look in her eyes remained with Trebor long afterward, the way they shined with trauma made Trebor’s heart heavy. She was such a young, pretty woman. How could these scoundrels do such things, never mind to a defenceless _woman_? As he lit his pipe that evening, he held Alice a little tighter when they said goodnight. _Yes,_ he thought. _There really were some awful people in this world._

What Trebor didn’t see, of course, was that the couple whom introduced themselves as the Rogers’ dropped their sorrowful expressions the moment they turned the corner from the police station. He didn’t see the way they kissed with burning, youthful passion and jubilant celebration once they had turned down an alleyway or the way they ditched their service uniform clothing once they were on the train. He would never have guessed, even had he been on that train, even in the same carriage, that the passionate young couple huddled in the embrace of honeymooners was, in fact, ‘the Rogers’. 

No, so concrete was their plan, Trebor would never know that they were not The Rogers at all. 

 

 

“Where to now, _Mr Rogers?_ ” Vera whispered, high with the jitters of secrecy as they sat in the back of a taxi. She used the name in humour, knowing it would make him grin, smug bastard that he was, because they _actually_ would never have to be the Rogers ever again, having just witnessed Philip purchase their new papers from a conspicuous man in a dark coat on the station platform. She was slightly on edge, but mostly considerably thrilled by it all. They had carried out an incredibly illegal transaction and all without conversing at all, all by passing a simply newspaper while sat on a bench! Who knew it could be so _easy_? 

“Southampton,” he replied, dropping a kiss about her ear. The relief of being in control looked good on him, so thought, as she gazed over him in his deep blue suit, much like the one he had been wearing the day they met. Who kept such a wonderful suit on standby, when it could possibly never be worn? It seemed such a _waste_ , she thought. They had journeyed straight from the police station on the coast back up to London as The Rogers’, where Philip made instant contact with those that would help them to take their own identities back. They had arrived at Philip’s ‘safehouse’ flat, as he called it – a residence he rented under another name in case he needed a place to hide. There, spare clothes had been waiting for them both, having been delivered in a package within an hour of Philip making contact via the telephone at Kings Cross. It had been a shame to have to loose all her belongings in the fire, but it had been necessary, since there were particular things that would have given away that she was not Mrs. Rogers, should the police have searched them or suspected them of lying. However, it was little sacrifice, as the clothing that arrived was much more indulgent than that she had lost – with garments of silk and lace as well as the practical cotton and even _three_ sets of nylons! Philip had looked incredibly smug when everything had fitted just right.  

“And then?” She dropped a kiss to his jaw, enjoying this new role that they could play of innocent, loved-up honeymooners with no a care in the world. 

“Us Irish have many a root in Brooklyn, these days…. Boston too…” His hand smoothed over her thigh, leaving tingles in its wake.

She thought back on their escape – Philip’s seemingly innate husbandly concern, his London accent, his ability to hide all his natural dominance – and shook her head, still in a state of disbelief. 

“What?” he probed, slipping his fingers under the hem of her skirt where she crossed her leg over his.

She thumbed the his velvet earlobe before smoothing the hair at his temple with her fingers, desperately attempting to quash her smirk. “Why didn’t you tell me you were such a good actor?”

She watched him as he grinned, exposing his teeth, before he let his expression drop back to neutral again. “There is plenty we have yet to discover about one another, Vera.”

In a strange way, the two found they were thankful to Wargrave for his covert, though devious, planning of the entire Island ordeal, as it meant that there was very little of a paper trail for them to destroy before they could flee. Thanks to Philip’s ingenious ploy – taking on the clothing and belongings of The Rogers’ and then abandoning their own nondescript belongings to be destroyed with that of the other guests – there was no record of a Philip Lombard or a Vera Claythorne ever being present on the island. The only issue left was to deal with the very few souls that Wargrave had hired to do his dirty work who knew their real names and knew they had been on the island and this was relatively simple to sort. Since Narracott, the fisherman who took them out to the island that first day, was bribed by Wargrave not to come back, he was partial to further bribes to keep from ever discussing that he took ten guests, not six, to the island that day. _“My guy assures me he was shittin’ his trousers,”_ Philip had sniggered after their second night in the safe house flat as he relayed to her the events of tracking him down. _“Barely had to offer him_ anything.” 

From there, the only two souls left who knew of their presence on the island was the Jewish hiring agent in Soho, Isaac Morris, and his secretary. Philip assured her of the easy of ridding them of this hindrance, too. 

 _“The sleaze-ball thought he was all that when he hired me, all smug and secretive. ‘My employer knows you’ and all that shit.”_ As they’d sat in a darkened, intimate restaurant in Marylebone, she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of him, his eyes glittering with delight as he relayed his devious acts of the day. _“I’d guessed from the moment I walked in I couldn’t trust him as far as I could throw ‘em, no matter how much I bribed him.”_

 _“Did you kill him?”_ she’d whispered breathlessly, both terrified and aroused at the prospect. She was wearing her new dress, an emerald green stunner, to celebrate their last night before they set off on their travels, or, as Philip liked to put it, ‘burning the trail’. 

 _“Are you sure you want to know?”_ he’d asked, and that was all the answer she had needed. She had kissed him hard, not caring that the middle-aged woman opposite them was giving her a hard stare of disapproval, and gripped his hand hard under the table. She didn’t want to think quite yet about what he may have done, to Morris and his secretary, though she knew herself to be far too nosey to suppress her questions for long. 

“New York…” she breathed in excitement as she tilted her face to the sun as it streaked through the window. 

“Should that please you… Mrs. _Lombard?”_ Taking his name was something that left both her loins burning and her stomach turning with equal measure and for what reason she could not decide. It made sense that they claim to be married, since a single woman travelling with a single man all the way to America was simply an implausible choice that would raise far too any questions. This way, they could be as intimate and physical as they liked and no one would look twice. They were simply honeymooners emigrating to the adopted home of their relatives to start their life together… and what was questionable about that? 

Together, they had managed to survive a seemingly doomed situation, one which had meant staring terror square in the face. Such a thing put everything into perspective, something that Vera was beginning to realise she had severely lacked in her life before.  Thanks to Philip’s ability to plot and plan and her ability to lie, they not only survived to see another day, but managed to make themselves completely invisible to the authorities, ensuring that all the bodies left behind were unidentifiable from one another and selecting the exact evidence they wanted the police to find.

 _Should_ Detective Inspector Trebor have thought to check, of course, he would have found that, by August 17th, the Rogers’ disappeared without so much as a discarded handkerchief. Not that the police did notice that is, since they were far too busy trying to track down a Mr. U. N. Owen to tell him of his house’s destruction. 

Meanwhile, many miles away, an rather anonymous young couple boarded the RMS Queen Mary bound for New York, with plans to settle with his Irish relatives along the East Coast. They boarded in second class, as they were modest in their savings and kept to themselves throughout the journey. They never left one another’s side, if venturing out on the deck but once a day. Other passengers thought them a little aloof, some antisocial, but most put it down to the inevitable intoxication of early romance and marriage. Some fellow passengers, so the pair overheard at dinner, even thought them to be ‘frighteningly predictable and dull’.

Their fellow guests never did quite understand why the illusive pair found such an insult so utterly hilarious.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? :)


End file.
